Major Don Filson squinted as he stepped out of the Casino into the bright sun. February in Santiago is hot and dry. On cloudless late afternoons like this, sparkling dust rode the wind between the buildings that were still standing. Pulverized concrete, powdered glass, and particles of things he didn’t like to think about glinted in the air like tiny blades.

  It would be nice when it finally rained. Maybe in March.

  After almost forty-eight hours in the Tactical Operations Center, it felt good to use his legs as he took long, purposeful strides. It had been a tiring stretch, alternating between heated sessions with the battalion staff and frenzied meetings with his lieutenants. Battalion had orders to establish an outpost between the rivers, and one of his platoons drew the mission. Finally satisfied that the plan wasn’t a total cock-up, and knowing that platoon leaders don’t need their company commander hovering over them as a mission approaches, Filson headed back to his hooch to grab an hour or two of rack before it kicked off.

  Sergeant First Class Dunlap was the first to call the TOC “the Casino.” He got a kick out of telling newbies, “It never shuts down. The lights are always on, and you have no idea what is going on outside in the rest of the world. Only difference here is the bets we make are with soldiers’ lives.” He’d let the surroundings sink in—the gloominess, the stale air, the nasty carpet and shitty commandeered furniture—before adding, “That and the lack of booze, scantily clad hot chicks, and an all-you-can-eat buffet, amirite?”

  Everybody loved Dunlap.

  He died about two weeks ago on a mission between the rivers. Filson still heard his voice every time someone said Casino.

  Already wincing from a sharp, too-much-coffee headache, Filson lowered his head to shield his eyes from the hammer-like impact of the sun as he trudged toward Raider Company’s area. The angle of his bowed head in the sun put a dark, razor-thin shadow just below his cropped hairline, highlighting his augmentation scar. Only a few years after his Centaur augmentation surgery—when they implanted brain-to-machine interfaces under his scalp and in his skull—the scar encircling his head was still puffy.

  Filson had volunteered for the program. He’d spent the prior decade deployed—first on the fizzling tail end of the Global War on Terror, then in the kabuki of false alarms, feints, and skirmishes with the Chinese in Africa and the South China Sea.

  By the time his name came out on the major’s list, he was troubled. The military was becoming more technology driven—more AI, drones, and robots. Fewer human troops. He was feeling obsolete and dreaded the next ten years of staff assignments once he pinned on the gold oak leaves.

  So, when the Army announced its new soldier-augmentation program, he leapt at it, demanding his reluctant commander approve his application.

  “You really wanna be one of those Centaur freaks, Filson?” Disappointment tainted the lieutenant colonel’s voice as he looked up from the application on his desk.

  “They’re the future, sir. I want to be where the action is.”

  Now, after Thucydides’ trap had properly sprung, and the great-power contest went hot in South America, he wouldn’t have minded a little less action.

  Damn dust.

  He blinked his watering eyes.

  Passing through the motor pool, the sound of revving forklifts and slamming doors lured his bloodshot eyes up in curiosity.

  A group of shipping containers was arranged in a half-moon formation, doors open wide, long interiors in shadow. Staff Sergeant Mendoza, tablet computer in one hand, gestured angrily at a beat-up soldierbot which stared back at him stoically. Behind Mendoza, a forklift drone hefted a pallet of deactivated robots.

  Fraying cargo straps crisscrossed the six-foot stack of deactivated robots teetering on the forks of the automated lift. It beeped as it maneuvered to get a straight shot into a container; the high-pitched sound striking Filson’s tired ears like a ball-peen hammer.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  But it was the soldierbot that made Filson stop.

  Humanoid and lanky—like a seven-foot skeleton made of faceted armored plating—the robot was covered in scratches and dents. Probably pristine urban digital camo when it first walked out of the factory, the soldierbot was now a smudged and mottled gunmetal and gray mess. Its head seemed small for its powerful frame and was wedge-shaped, like a wood-splitting maul.

  Filson had heard their heads’ shape enhanced the M-47’s multi-spectral vision. He didn’t know about that, but it sure as hell made them look mean. When they were fielded about a year ago, their distinctive heads earned them the nickname “Maulers.” That was all anyone called them now.

  The Mauler that Mendoza was berating had a deep gash on one side of its head. Raw metal glinted in the sun as the deep laceration angled across its cheek, like someone had tried to take its head off with a hatchet.

  Filson recognized the scar.

  “Hatch!” he called, changing direction in mid-stride.

  The soldierbot swiveled, recognizing the voice. So did SSG Mendoza.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Hatch said in his electronic monotone.

  Mendoza shook his head and frowned at the major’s approach.

  “Where you been?” Filson asked Hatch. “Haven’t seen you in a few days.”

  “Between the rivers with Outlaw Company, sir.”

  “Oh, shit.” Filson shook his head. “I heard that was a rough one.”

  “It was, sir.”

  Filson looked at Hatch for a long moment. The M-47s were early-model robotic infantry from Northrop Grumman. One of the first systems to enable command, control, and monitoring via Centaur implants, they had seen heavy combat so far in the effort to retake Santiago. Much of that with Raider Company. As far as Filson was concerned, the Maulers were the first soldierbots that didn’t suck.

  Filson nodded to Hatch and then looked at Mendoza.

  “How you doing, Sergeant?”

  “Fine, sir,” Mendoza said without looking up.

  “Oh, come on,” Filson smiled. “Don’t tell me you’re still sore about last week?”

  Mendoza dropped his arms to his sides. “The colonel tore me a new one over that shit, sir. You can’t just come in here and take equipment whenever you want and not sign for it. It always comes down on me.”

  “I needed those drones for a mission and was on a timeline.” Filson lifted his hands, palms up, in a helpless gesture. “And I brought them back.”

  “Yes, sir. In pieces in a rucksack.”

  Filson smiled and rubbed his forehead.

  Mendoza huffed and looked back at his tablet.

  “It won’t happen again, Sergeant,” Filson said in an apologetic voice. “And, for what it’s worth, I told the colonel it was my fault, and that you were the best motor pool NCO I’ve ever worked with.”

  Mendoza rolled his eyes.

  “Where’re they headed, anyway?” Filson nodded toward Hatch, hoping to get a clue about what General Havron was planning. After the Chinese surprise attack pushed the Americans and their Chilean allies out of Santiago into the sea a year ago, it was Havron who led the counterattack.

  A Centaur himself, the old man pulled together a hybrid force of every combat arms soldier and veteran he could find—active duty, retired, anybody. Then, in a daring operation historians were already comparing favorably to MacArthur at Inchon, he retook two-thirds of the country and almost had the People’s Liberation Army pushed all the way out of the capital.

  But the PLA clung to the south bank of the Maipo River. Stalemate set in.

  The rumor was that the general was dreaming up a daring operation to disrupt the current situation.

  Is he pre-positioning these guys?

  “Stateside scrapheap.” Mendoza didn’t look up.

  “What?”

  The sergeant shrugged. “LMB got the contract for the next-gen fighting bots.”

  “You mean those shiny kangaroos with the chickenshit drivers in air-conditioned boxes behind the wire?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s that got to do with Hatch and his guys?”

  Mendoza lifted his head as if it weighed a thousand pounds. “Do I look like I negotiate the contracts, sir?”

  Filson laughed and shook his head.

  “That’s for you white-gloved officer types,” Mendoza added, smiling with pleasure at Filson’s guffaw.

  “Yeah. I was on my way to a champagne reception just now,” Filson said, winking.

  Mendoza smiled, and the two men shared a dusty moment of chuckles while Hatch looked on.

  “Seriously,” Filson said. “What gives?”

  “All I know is the LMB assholes wanted Hatch and his Maulers off premises ASAP. Something about non-competes and conflicts of… something. So, I have to jump through my ass to get them on tomorrow’s heavy drone back to the States.”

  Lockheed Martin Boeing was the largest arms manufacturer in the free world. Infamously protective of their business interests, Filson wasn’t surprised they had muscled poor little Northrop Grumman out.

  “And what happens to them then?”

  Mendoza shrugged again. “Scrapped.”

  “Well, that’s some shit,” Filson said sadly. He looked back at Hatch, who stood motionless, gazing back at him.

  “Like I said, sir. It ain’t up to me.” Mendoza looked down at his tablet.

  Filson sighed.

  “It’s a damn shame, Sergeant.”

  Mendoza glanced up from his tablet. He nodded indifferently and then lowered his eyes again.

  Filson looked at the battle-scarred robot. “I don’t know if anyone else is going to tell you, Hatch. But you guys fought well. Did yourselves proud. I was glad to have you.”

  It was ridiculous, he knew, but Filson found himself extending his hand to Hatch.

  The robot looked down at it, then back at Filson. He reached out and shook the major’s hand.

  Unsure what else to say, Filson left.

  He glanced at his watch. Third Platoon went between the rivers in a few hours.